Buckinghamshire, the daughter of Richard and Judy Salmon (née Kitchin). She attended Tonbridge Girls' Grammar School, then read Political Science at the University of Warwick. After graduation, Leadsom began a career in the financial sector as a debt trader for Barclays de Zoete Wedd, then the investment bank division of Barclays Bank. For Barclays itself, she served as Deputy Director in the Financial Institutions team from 1993; this involved the maintenance of contractual relationships with other banks. In this role, she said she was given a "ringside seat" in the collapse of Barings Bank. Leadsom clashed with the head of Barclays Investments who tried to persuade her to return to full-time work soon after a pregnancy, and she left the company in 1997. From 1997 to 1999, Leadsom served as Managing Director of De Putron Fund Management (DPFM). In 1998 she was promoted to board director for marketing. Leadsom was Head of Corporate Governance and a Senior Investment Officer at Invesco Perpetual from 1999 to 2009. Her role was to work (sometimes part-time) on "special projects", mostly for the Chief Investment Officer, which included negotiating pay terms for senior fund managers. Towards the end of her time, she advised on a number of governance issues, but she had no-one reporting to her in either role. Leadsom never claimed to have personally been a fund manager, and Bob Yerbury, former Chief Investment Officer at Invesco Perpetual and Leadsom's former manager, dismissed the controversy about how she described her time there and described her as "totally honest". Leadsom was a Councillor on South Oxfordshire District Council between 2003 and 2007. She contested the safe Labour seat of Knowsley South constituency in the 2005 general election unsuccessfully and finished in third place, adding just under 1% to the previous vote. She was subsequently placed on the Conservative A-List and later chosen to represent the newly created seat of South Northamptonshire. Political career Early parliamentary career (2010–2013) Leadsom was selected to stand as the parliamentary candidate in the newly-created South Northamptonshire constituency in June 2006. In 2009, ConservativeHome said that she was "defending a notional Conservative majority of 11,356." At the 2010 general election in May, Leadsom was elected with a majority of more than 20,000. On entering the House of Commons she was elected as a member of the Treasury Select Committee. She made her maiden speech on 22 June 2010 during the